This ongoing dispute over religious beliefs will never end as long as people in the majority continue to display theirs in public.

Yesterday I almost received a punch in the mouth. This occurred at our coffee klatch at McDonalds.

An individual entered our discussion of current gas prices with the old urban legend of the Ford with a 60-miles-per-gallon carburetor which Ford wanted to buy back because they put the carburetor on by mistake. Supposedly an oil company had bought up the patent in order to sell more gas.

I challenged this and the individual immediately got angry and said, "Are you calling me and my father-in-law a liar?"

What to say? I said the only thing I could and that was that this story had made the rounds for many years and I had heard it from other people. What else could I say? A person passing on these stories is basically a liar. Believing something does not make it true.

It is much the same about the legends, myths and stories about gods, goddesses and a spiritual world--all from the past and current believers who have faith in these pronouncements. The intent is to bolster their faith by destroying any challenge to their spiritual beliefs.

What is a rational, thinking person to do? Well, it is being done today in the confrontation taking place over those pushing their favorite spiritual, religious dogma into the public venue of society, government and education.

Medical science has disproved the 18th century myth that a complete human being exists in miniature at the beginning of pregnancy. This evidently is still a valid belief to those who are against abortion.

"It is an established maxim and moral that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him." -- Abraham Lincoln, chiding the editor of a Springfield, Illinois, newspaper, quoted from Antony Flew, How to Think Straight, p. 17

As for the fertilized egg becoming human, this is only a question in the legal sense -- every other sense is merely academic. In the United States, in certain situations, that moment is the beginning of the second trimester. In all other situations (so far), that moment is the moment of birth. Call it what you want under other applications, but this is the legal definition and that's the only application with which we have anything to do other than to hold a discussion.

Besides, I'm closing in on thirty years of boycotting McDonald's. That big ol' giant inflatable Ronald McDonald sitting atop certain locations, waving at passersby and blocking our view of the sunset? Now that's what slingshots are for!